Invest your cash NOW!

Hey, you!

Yeh, YOU!

...

You wanna buy a house?

Heh, have I got a sweeeeeet deal for yous!

Yes, I do!

Because, !!!breaking news!!!, some are being built right outside my apartment right here in mega-trendy-glitzy-wow-wow Kita-ward Tokyo!

Using hyper-space reduction technology, they have managed to fit 8 houses
into an area the size of two tennis courts! I'm not even kidding!
Light sources and any evidence of nature were the first to bite the bullet

That's right, for just JPY 45800000 - that's about GBP 200,000 - you can have your very own glorified box-for-living-in!

*pauses for applause*

That's right, you will be able to scoff at your friends plight as they live out their days in landlord-owned apartments when you own the 3 floor - that's right, 3 floor townhouse!!!

Walls are constructed using thin slabs of plywood not unlike the ones I used to use
to build miniature houses for Games Workshop board games - life imitating art indeed

Each house is made of 100% real wood! Not real as in part of a tree, but as in reconstituted wood (like a Chicken McNugget). Stop wasting time and money with trendy house-building fads like insulation (hah!), load bearing walls (scoff!) and earthquake-proof materials (peh!). We got the real deal here! Each house is designed so that once a big earthquake strikes Tokyo, The entire house will break apart effortlessly into its original flat-pack furniture state using real world physics!! This way, you can load your house onto a truck and reconstruct it in some prime refugee-camp real estate before everyone else has even pitched a tent!

But don't get too hasty, licking your lips in anticipation of the day the big 'quake comes - first, any earthquake will have to get past these brutal defenses!!

We have employed models to demonstrate that contrary to popular belief, Japanese homes do have
rooms big enough to accommodate a sleeping human being without having to stand up!

Yes, we managed to find some really big screws in the DIY shop that will fit snugly into the wooden beams that hold up the house! Can you see any non man-made power getting through these metal defenses? Me neither!

Ok, I know what you're thinking - "Ok, I agree - wood is the future of construction in earthquake prone countries - but won't it get all soggy when it rains? Or what happens if a meteor hits the outside of the house? Won't it catch fire and experience minor scolding?"

It's a good point. First, let me just remind you that we are talking about reconstituted wood, not real wood. When you see those big Australian bush fires on TV, that's real wood. Reconstituted wood is basically super-wood. It's man-made.
Of course, we could just leave the house as it is - but - as an added FREE bonus - we are going to glue some fake-stone panels onto the outside of the houses!

Have you ever seen a real brick that long? Of course not!
By using fake bricks, we can make them look up to a meter long!

These seem to be made of a similar material to real bricks, but crucially they have all the warm, cosy appearance of real bricks, without any of that "structural integrity" nonsense!

Japanese rooms aren't measured in meters, or inches, or any silly rule invented by foreigners. Rather, they are measured by how many tatami-mats you can fit into the room.

About 20% of the house's volume is composed of stairs!
Experts say that 95% of a family's most cherished memories are linked to stairways somehow

Perhaps the text is too small to read, so let me just tell you now... the second floor has a "Living-Dining Room-Kitchen" room that is 11.9 tatami mats in size! Wow! You could almost fit 12 tatami mats in there! Don't worry though - none of the rooms will have tatami anyway, they will all have (fake) fake wood flooring (as in not reconstituted wood, but plastic sheets made to look like wood).

So, come along NOW and buy one whilst you can!! You will almost certainly spend the rest of your life in this house! After all, Japan is obsessed with new homes, so no-one is ever going to buy it off you second-hand, and certainly not at anything better than half price. You may not even legally own the 10x5 meters plot (better check with the estate agent on that one!).

Please send your credit card details, plus a letter or permission stating that a) you are a moron and b) you will not try to sue me when your dreams are shattered by wafer-thin realities.

Best regards,

Nyago real estate - "Because a Japanese man's home is his prison"

DS Kanji Training

In my third post of the day, I want to talk about the first piece of DS software that I've enjoyed in a few months.

I pretty much stopped studying Japanese after I took the JLPT Level 2 exam in December 2005. It was such an effort that after 4 years of studying, I just needed a break.

It's surprising how much your standards can slip in 14 months.

I've been looking for a while now for some good Japanese training software. The problem is that after Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training, these "edutainment" games became so popular that the market became flooded with me-too titles, making it really hard to find anything of quality. Added to this is the problem that all the software is designed for Japanese people rather than people learning the language.


Well, this is the first software that I have felt is a good match. It's called - wait for it - Zaidan Houjin Nihon Kanji Nouryoku Kettei Kyoukai Koushiki Soft 200-Man Nin no Kanken -- Tokoton Kanji Nou.

Phew. Let's just call it ZHNKNKKKS200MNNK-TKN to make things simpler, shall we?

I could tell you how ZHNKNKKKS200MNNK-TKN works, or, you could just watch this video;



I really recommend this software for anyone who already knows a couple of hundred kanji already, but wants to get some thorough practice in. The game isn't much use for learning new kanji, so you will probably want to play it with your dictionary at hand. But it is peerless for helping you to commit kanji that you know to memory.

I only have a few gripes;

--Sometimes there are kanji that I don't know. In an ideal world, where all software is designed specifically with me in mind, there would be a way of showing me the English translation of these words.
--The program has occasional problems recognising my handwriting - specifically the Kanji for fire (火) and the number '5', which, as you can imagine, is pretty frustrating. I have spent minutes just repeatedly scribbling 5 in as many different styles as I can imagine, only to end up exasperated and swearing wildly.
--The menus are all in kanji, which I find a little strange - surely, if you are using kanji training software, there is a possibility that your customer won't be able to read some of this? Is it so hard to use furigana? Perhaps, once the student has come across and passed those kanji in-game, the furigana could then disappear?

Other than that, this is definitely gaijin-friendly stuff. But don't throw away your kanji cards out just yet.

Rating: Sweet pickles/Japanese foods
Price: 2500JPY (Cheap! Just over a tenner!)

Filling time

I've always been quite proud of my teeth - especially the fact that I don't have any fillings.

Well, I've now discovered that the easiest way to avoid having fillings is not to brush diligently and avoid sugars, but simply to avoid going to the dentist at all. By not going you can delude yourself into thinking that your teeth are just tickedy-boo. It's a cheap but ultimately self-destructive method.

Despite hearing countless horror stories about Japanese dentists, I was pretty impressed.
Maybe I just got lucky.

In my first visit to the dentist in almost four years, I was told that I had no less than three cavities. I guess that would explain the sensitivity a little. However, two of them are on my wisdom teeth, which I didn't even realise I had. Seeing as most people have their wisdom teeth pulled, I figure that these two cavities don't count, effectively giving me just one filling, which isn't too bad, right? I'm gonna look at these wisdom teeth as some kind of bonus item that I can abuse at will (a bit like unwanted children). Like when you pick up a shield in Sonic and you become a little careless. It doesn't matter if you lose the shield after all.

Wisdom teeth are called oya-shirazu in Japanese, which literally means 'teeth that your parents don't know about'. I guess that puts them in the same category as porno magazines (not that I've ever owned porno mags - but I've heard that other people do). I imagine that all Japanese men are terrified of their mothers discovering their secret stash of rotting black wisdom teeth. Having them yanked out is a pretty painful process after all.

I'll be heading back there next week to do the dirty deed. Time to close my eyes and think of the queen.

Dirty, dirty boy

Man, I'm glad that's over. Spent over an hour in make up just to look like this:

Oops, left the camera in macro-mode

Yeh, back to my mining heritage. I even wore a hard-hat.

Wearing a thick coat of make-up isn't much fun, I can tell you.
What made it worse was that they asked us to come in at 1pm, and we didn't start filming until 10pm! In the meantime, Kimutaku came and did his bit and left without any of us noticing... the rest will be down to the magic of post-production. I'm looking forward to seeing this one - should be pretty hilarious.

Still, it gave me plenty of time to practice my kanji. As you shall see.

Another brush with fame

Whilst we're on the twin subjects of bad-hair and Japan, I guess I should mention my current job that I'll be undertaking in a few hours. It's a TV commercial for Gatsby, a Japanese male beauty product manufacturer.

I'll be working with mega-famous Japanese talent and SMAP member Takuya Kimura (Kimutaku).

I won't ruin the contents of the ad, but for those of you who are curious, here is the previous ad;



Phew, it's gonna be tough to live up to that one!

Yakuza war? Yes please

This is where your lost pachinko money gets invested

The Yakuza. Seems like there have been some rival shootings of late, and people are worried that it will escalate into an all out turf-war.
I say bring it on. The Yakuza disgust me, and the sooner they wipe each other out the better.

It really rubs me up the way that the 'kuza get portrayed as 'cool' in the media - TV, film, games, manga etc. Don't be fooled by the whole 'gangsta' routine.

The Yakuza are not cool. They are a joke.

Let's have a look.

Sorry, I couldn't find a better image - this guy doesn't look to bad actually

Your haircuts are ridiculous. I'm sure they are directly responsible for the large ozone-hole over Japan thanks to their one-can-of-hairspray per day atrocities. To be fair, only young Yakuza seem to subscribe to the Dragonball haircuts - I think all their hair falls out when they turn 30.

Your clothes are ridiculous. The 70's was a long time ago. Seriously, Yakuza fashion seems to have taken every hideous fashion trend from the 70's and 80's and fused them into one cogent embarrassment.
And you know what - the Yakuza make lots of money. They spend said money on brand goods. They make said brand goods look decidedly cheap. The sight of Louis Vuitton makes me want to throw up now.

When you speak, you sound like 4 year old children having a tantrum. But through the voice of a drunk chain smoker. Pull yourself together.

All of this is merely the way that they project themselves externally. Don't worry - Yakuzites are equally repulsive inside. If you've ever seen one in the flesh, doing his thing, then you will have been reminded of how low human beings can sink. They are simply an embarrassment to behold.

So, next time you're watching a Yakuza movie, or playing the Sega 'Yakuza' game, don't be fooled - the Yakuza are twats, and have no place in modern society. I repeat - the Yakuza are not cool. Get rid.

Battlestar Galactica - MUCH better than the original series

That's right. Sticking my foot out there on this one.

Believe it or not, this is sci-fi. In the future, people wear two vests.

It's pretty good. Good enough that I watched all of series 1 (5 DVD's) in one weekend.

As a teenager, I watched StarTrek - The Next Generation almost every day after school. I wasn't a Trekkie - it was just the best thing on TV from 5-6pm.
But I'm not gonna lie to you - it's obvious that I enjoy a bit of escapism. My life is steeped in Games Workshop and video game lore. And traveling is basically escapism too.

But oddly, what makes B.G. great isn't that it's sci-fi. Its visual effects are adequate if unspectacular (though they never look cheesy), and its premise is hardly new (robots go out of control and attempt human genocide).
What makes B.G. great is that it's a human drama. It just happens to be set in space. And dang, it really sucks you in.
The producers really did a great job. They really understood the zeitgeist. Now, I'm gonna talk about the zeitgeist for a bit. Some of you may wish to switch off now.

In this era of "web 2.0", people aren't so easily wowed any more. You can't expect to just stick some futuristic gadget on TV, make it go 'bleep bloop' and then the audience are amazed. We're too wise to all that now.

Last night, Moonraker was on the TV. Somehow, I'm a Roger Moore fan. He made James Bond so camp, so debonair... it was great 80's stuff to watch. But watching it last night, for the first time in yonks... it was quite... stupid. Maybe Austin Powers really helped us all realise how ridiculous it all was. So detached from reality. The best, most memorable scene in the film is the cable-car scene with Jaws. There are no laser guns. No quasi-futuristic clothes. Just two men trying to kill each other in a tense spectacular scenario. It's a great scene.
Now don't go telling me that Sean Connery was the "correct" Bond. There are just as many problems with the smarmy, rotund Scot as any other of the Bonds. But that's a different issue.

If we fast forward to the now... the new Bond... Daniel Craig... I would say that it's the best movie containing James Bond ever . It isn't necessarily the best Bond movie (continue reading and I hope you'll catch my drift), if you consider Bond as a genre unto itself, but, if you just consider it as a film, an artistic, dramatic creation, then it blows the other Bond movies away. Bond movies should always be a product of its era. And, like Battlestar Galactica, Casino Royale is most definitely a product of (and a contributor to) the current zeitgeist.

So, what is the current Zeitgeist? I would say that it contains the basic tenants (there may be more - please enlighten me);

• The characters are human, and therefore susceptible to human weaknesses. We are vulnarable. And you can't just kidnap a girl and then the guy must put down his weapon. It goes much deeper.
• Characters have a reason for their evil actions. They cannot just be de-facto evil. To see why people become terrorists, to see people lie and cheat out of greed and a desire for power... these are human traits, and we want to see them. Think of a Ghibli anime compared to a Disney one. Thinking about the world this way can help us understand the current socio-political climate of our world. It ain't so black and white. We all have the potential to undertake malicious acts. Stories help us understand the motivation that can provoke such acts. That's why there should be no censorship, and no 'taboo' subject matter.
  
• Technology isn't a story element - it's a prop. So, find a suitable, believable prop, use it, and move on with the story. Don't dwell on it. Don't gloat over its omnipotent powers. You will look stupid in 10 years time, I guarantee you. In B.G., much of the technology actually goes backwards from our current time - phones are cluncky and have wires. That's future-proof, right there. They have circumnavigated against any possible future accusations of being outdated - genius.
• When people fight, it hurts. Body's slam against walls, blood flies, scars remain. For a while afterwards, you will be exhausted. Fighting isn't fun. Look at Bond fight. It hurts just to watch. You really believe that a guy like him would fight like that. There are no roundhouse kicks.
• Women can be tough. Men can be sexy. The two are not exclusive.
  

In a nutshell, it's about people. B.G. is basically ER in space. ER must be more than 10 years old now. It was pretty groundbreaking at the time. The notion that Doctors get tired, that Hospitals aren't super white and squeaky clean, that people die and bleed and cry...
B.G. also borrows the camera style from ER. Close-up, shaky hand cams. Faces that fill the entire screen. The B.G.'s commander (The guy in the photo above) has a really rough, pitted skin texture. You watch B.G., and you will see it. This is a tough guy. What a contrast to Captain Picard.

Does all this have any implications for video games? Yeh, of course. Unfortunately, they are pretty harsh ones too. In TV and movies, visual effects are an accompaniment to the actual footage. You analyse where you need CGI, and you make it.
A video game is 100% visual effects - everything has to be realised by an artist. It's a cruel twist that the resource most important to TV and film is also the easiest to aquire - real human actors. Sadly for games, they need actors, humans, too. But they have to create them from the ground up. And humans are the most complicated, detailed of all objects.
With so much focus - and resources - on the visual effects, it's very easy to forget that the goal of a video game isn't to have spectacular, eye-bleeding effects (stand up Perfect Dark Zero - now get out) - but to have great gameplay. With the new generation of consoles, the resources required to produce adequate graphics in high-definition are astounding. I really suspect that many developers will lose sight of the goal.
The second challenge comes from this rejection of form before function. If games aren't played for their graphics, what are they played for? The answer is of course, gameplay. Good ol' mysterious gameplay. Nobody knows what gameplay really is - just like we don't know what a great story is. There is no guaranteed formula. This is why we really need higher education courses that focus on this. Wake up people - games are real, they entertain millions of people, and create millions of jobs (developing, manufacturing, distributing, retailing, press, PR...). The amount of people from varied backgrounds with game-specific skills is cripplingly low. I'm talking about non-techincal skills here. Anyone can learn Maya or 3D studio Max. But how do we learn about level design? Game narrative? Character design, when we have to design the game for every individual player?
Giving people three years to think about things and experiment will make the world of difference. Currently, High-Ed game courses are of a fairly low caliber. This will surely improve over time as the mount of people qualified to teach and the quality of game related literature improves.
Many games are also important for their story and characterization. Half Life has an intriguing, character-led story. Final Fantasy 12 does not. They aren't necessities for a great game, but they sure do help to maintain your interest. Half Life is unique in that there are no cut-scenes. You never once leave the body of your avatar, Gordon Freeman. Sometimes, you walk past a door and you hear a conversation on the other side. This is an example of game designers looking at narrative from a gaming perspective rather than a film one. We are in the game - so please, don't take us out if it. It's all so wrong. In Total Warrior: Spartan, there are occasional cut-scenes where your avatar gets angry, shouts, and generally makes decisions on your behalf. This is a guy that you never really see in-game, as the camera is zoomed out in order to make the game playable (as opposed to Dynasty Warriors, where the camera is much closer - too close in fact, and you can't keep track of your enemies). This actually made me dislike the Spartan character. At the end of the day, perhaps all video game avatars should be mute, like Link, Gordon Freeman and Master Chief. As soon as some deep American voice bellows out of my body, I'm suddenly reminded that I'm in a video game.

Games are starting to get more realistic. More human. They will start to challenge our actions. Deus Ex tried it, and I think more will. When we play a game, we kill people without question. There will be games that challenge this notion. Don't let your kids out of the house, because, you know you don't want kids playing this stuff. That doesn't mean that its wrong - games have an untapped potential to be profound. I can't wait to see it.

It's no longer good enough to make a 'cool' product, market it to death and reap the rewards. In this era, consumers are smart. If something is full of crap, flawed or cynical, then you can bet your board-room-decisions arse that "the web" is gonna talk about it, and your reputation will be shredded mercilessly. In the 90's, in the decade of marketing, Playstation killed Sega's hardware division by appearing to be the 'cooler' product with guerrila advertising in night clubs and festivals. No-one realised that the Dreamcast was stuffed with great exclusive games. Fast forward 12 years, and Sony is getting murdered by bad press surrounding the PSP and PS3. They are essentially using the same marketing tactics - ads that concentrate on the 'spirit' and 'coolness' of the Playstation brand rather than the quality of the product.
In a distant land called the internet, consumers are tearing them apart in forums.
In the meantime, Nintendo releases a new, reasonably priced, innovative product. The TV commercials show people playing the game. If you make a good product, the people in the internet forums will do all the marketing you could ever need.

This is web 2.0. We won't be patronised any longer.

What were they thinking...

Oh dear. TV has come a long way in 30 years I guess.

Watching them now, the Star Wars movies are a little cheesy at times, but overall, I'd say they still do a good job of suspending belief.

This 2-hour special from 1978 did a great job of almost destroying a dynamite brand. It's about Chewbacca trying to get home for "Life Day". And it's just shocking.


The best part is at around 4:20 - make sure that you stick around for that.

Don't let anyone tell you that the 70's were "cooler" than the 80's. They weren't. They were just wrong in different ways.

The procrastination of truth

Remember a while back I posted about "getting closer to why I am in Japan".

Well, lately, it hasn't been going according to plan.


I didn't get the Motion Capture part.
The movie is looking increasingly dubious.
I still haven't heard about any jobs from my Game Localisation company.

Those were my three main goals for this year, and they are looking slightly vaporous...

Despite all this, I've been in pretty good spirits lately. I've just finished another tax course - perhaps the relief from that is perking me up. It's always nice to finish a teaching job, and realising that both you and the students somehow enjoyed it. Today we did a two hour roleplay session of a foreigner filling his Tax payments... somehow, the students were enjoying it; laughing, smiling. Bizzare.

Well, they are out of my life now, so it's time to think about what comes next. I've got a few TV jobs coming up in Feb, so that should keep me ticking over in the meantime. I'm doing one commercial with a mega-famous pop star from SMAP too. It'll be the most I've ever gotten paid for one day's work. I deserve it, need it, will use it.

I was walking home the other day, and suddenly realised.... if I leave Japan, I won't be able to eat sushi (properly)... this shook me a bit. Not sure if I can leave Japan now. The food here is just so great. British food is so miserable... it makes me angry. Gastro pubs? Friking gastro pubs? Who the hell are these idiots. I went to one in London with Mickey O' last year... it was basically pub food, with herbs shucked on. Decorated with fancy names and dim lighting.
Don't get me wrong - there is plenty of good food in the UK. The problem is, if you go in a pub/restaurant/cafe and order food, 70% chance it will be merely adequate... it's like just producing the meal is the goal (on a large plate so that you can charge five quid for it). I worked in a pub. It was dreadful. Almost everything was frozen-->microwaved.
Am I being too cynical here? Am I looking at the UK through shit-tainted glasses?

Nyago on TV, Nov-Jan

I've been gradually stocking up my TV performances on the HDD recorder for awhile now, and with no more appearances scheduled for the near future, I thought it high time for this compilation.
I've been on Beat Takeshi's Unbelievable 4 times now... I must say, it is fun. I always laugh when I see myself on it. The ridiculousness of it all still isn't lost on me.



My acting career has been on a brief hiatus for the past month (Hence the large amount of free-time enabled posts recently). Indeed, I'll be teaching English to Tax Officers again for 4 days from tomorrow.

Until greater things appear, please enjoy the video.

This is the world we live in

And these are the hands we're given.

It's been a frustrating day.

My goal was to make a highlights reel for Youtube of all my extra roles from the past couple of months.

First, I deleted one of the best ones by accident. That made me angry.

Then, Windows Movie Maker decided not to cooperate. If you've never used WMM... don't! It is seriously bad software. So buggy. A pale imitation of iMovie, to be sure.

Anyway, I've put this video up for now. I'm not in it, but it is nonetheless pretty ridiculous. I decided not to translate it, as I'm sure that your furtive imaginations will come up with much better content.



This has inspired me to put together an article about novelty Japanese celebs, and how they get chained to a single image for the rest of their careers. Poor bastards. Eventually, they cease to be odd any more - just noticable.
Mum sometimes said that if you do a funny face and the wind changes direction, that face will stick forever. I think there's an analogy in there somewhere.
If anyone out there has any ideas for image gimmicks that can get me noticed in Japanese TV, I'll be glad to hear! :-P Extensive nose elongation surgery perhaps?

Nyago new release! 'Draw dros y mor'

Nobody said that making music was easy - thankfully, it is now in the hands of nerds

I was walking back from the video shop, and a new tune came in to my head.

It quickly took shape.

I could see:
It was going to be something special.

Sadly, that's not the same song that I have put together today - amongst all the hassle of setting up the keyboard, laying down drum beats etc, I'd quite forgotten what I intended to do. Damn it - must use the voice recorder on my phone in future! Even if I do look like a doink singing in the streets.

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this song - 'Draw dros y mor' (Welsh for 'Over the sea'). It's quite notable for me in that;
It's my first song in months
It has my my first audio sample - the trains outside the apartment
It has voice samples from my favourite singer (me)
I did it in Welsh (current fad of mine)

Anyways, enough reading about it - go ahead and load it up in the Nyago music player on the right, and have a listen for yourselves. I think it's a bit too long myself again, and perhaps has too much going on at times.

You can download it here too (remember to right click->save link as);
Download Nyago: Draw Dros y Mor.mp3